Drew9586

I suspect your giveing us the answer right here. The smaller keepers you have caught, were they long and thin? If so your problem is an overcrowded body of water... which may be the problem even if those keepers look well fed. If you dont have enough large predator fish and too many small ones there will not be enough food to go around. The pond probably has a couple big fish that eat anything and a ton of small fish with nothing in between. You can search the internet for a table which lists the weight to length ratio of healthy bass, or check out the website for Pond Boss magazine where its listed on their forums in one of the stickied posts I believe. That will give you the best idea if the problem is underfed fish. If the problem is underfed fish you'll need to find out who the owner is, prove to them the problem is too many little fish, and then, with premission, remove them (bring a kid along and fish with worms for a while). Nature has a wonderfull way of working. After enough of the little ones have been caught (which may take a few years depending on how much you fish) the others will start growing bigger. You'll know you have caught enough when you start catching fish that are a decent size. The general rule of thumb is to remove 20lb of fish per year per acre of the body of water... however that is REAL variable. My best advice to you would be to check out the forums on that site I mentioned earlier, Pond Boss magazine, and read what the real experts say. All of that assumes the problem really is too many fish which I suspect based on the statement "A LOT" of smaller fish.

One more thing on spinnerbaits... its ok to move at one speed if your trying to provoke a reaction strike... then reel as fast as you can and try to bang the bait into wood or rocks... when you hit those things stop reeling for half a second and hold on, that can get your rod jerked right out of your hands!

There are times I try to drag the worm back to the boat keeping it moveing constantly, but at other times I will slow it down so much that a single cast can take 10 or 12 minutes to get back to the boat. An example is the year before last a friend asked me to go to Lake Dardanelle on the 4th of July. There was not a single time where 5 minutes would go by without another boat comming by fishing or a jet ski or ski-boat going by like a bat outta heck. The other boats were mostly nice bass boats while we were in a worn out old 16' jonboat with a 20hp motor... and anchored at a grassy point that leads out to a deep section 50ft or so off shore. The other boats would see us not even move our lines and ask if fish were biteing live bait since they were not biteing artificials. We musta caught 20 that day, all on 6" pumpkinseed finess worms. The thing is the guys comming by with no patience couldnt catch anything, while we caught a lot. The moral of this rambeling is when fishing worms sometimes fast is ok, but others you need to slow down. When you think your slow enough, cut that speed in half. Then slow down a little more... works like magic on high pressure days or lakes. For spinner baits... keep in mind that nothing in nature moves in a straight line at constant speeds. If you throw out and real in at a constant speed you'll be lucky to get anything, and if you do it will be small. Slow down, speed up, raise your rod tip, lower your rod tip, move it side to side, jerk it some, even practice your hooksets from time to time. If your actually useing a sinnerbait right you'll wear yourself out and WANT to tie on a worm for a break now and then!

Any winter month... I have this thing with snakes!

Every time I hear this theory I have a hard time deciding if it can be true or not. I always work my way back to one thought: Why is it that in any large geographic area most water bodies have the same fish species? If you go back in time enough most of the continent was underwater, but that is far enough back that anything from then would have evolved into vastly different fish. Think about it, how many species of bass do we have in North America? How many species of catfish? I dont know that I can believe that birds drop fish into a new body of water, but at the same time, given that a few species of fish are sooo prevelant in water bodies throughout the continent, I dont know that I CANT believe birds drop fish into new bodies of water. Would be nice to know for sure!

Now that one is just BEGGING for a comment or two...

Lots of people are afraid of snakes to some degree. I, however, have a true case of ophidiaphobia (sp?). I wake up at least once a week from nightmares about snakes. If I see one while fishing I have to leave that part of the lake because, as crazy as it seems, I just cant convince myself that the sneaky thing isnt just trying to get out of sight so that he can come up behind me and bite me! I have not been able to fish from shore for close to 20 years now! I cant even walk out of my house (in the city where I have never seen a snake) and walk on grass without at least haveing shoes on, and I'm nervous as hell doing that (boots are much easier on my mind). Dosnt matter if they are poisoness or not, they still scare me more than I could explain. Makes fishing very difficult, to the point that fishing in winter is much more fun than in nicer weather! All of this is said to remind you guys that do like snakes that you should exercize caution when handeling them or showing them to others as some of us just truly cant handle it. For most of us with a real phobia often one traumatic experience is what truns a normal aversion into a phobia that haunts your whole life. That traumatic experience, from talking to others with the same problem I have, can be as simple as seeing someone holding one, so please, exercise caution and good judgement in your interactions with others.